Since her election IFLA PPP Chair Marina Cervera Alonso de Medina has been restructuring the Working Groups in order to start 2017 fresh with 7 active Groups, each with clear leadership of the appointed Chair and an agreed mission and vision to be disseminated amongst our IFLA community and beyond. This work is outlined below:

INTA, the global membership association of policy-makers and urban practitioners who contribute significantly to sustainable urban development, have released details of proceedings of their recent World Congress, INTA40 which was held in Lisbon in October and attended by over 200 people. The papers can be found here

On Wednesday, November 30, the OMBUS sample was concluded at the Figari Museum, Montevideo.

Ana Vallarino Katzenstein, (Arq., Dra. esp. en Paisaje, Prof. Agr. G°4 FADU UdelaR, Uruguay and IFLA Delegate) reported it was a very busy night, more than a hundred people visited yesterday the exhibition and filled the facilities of the first floor of the museum intended for presentation.

It was conducted by the doctor of linguistics Lisa Block and agronomist Paul Ross , who wi

The IFLA Europe Award 2016 has been granted to the European Commission, Directorate General for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.

IFLA Europe stated “It is the aim of the IFLA Europe to, following its Statutes and Regulations approved in the General Assembly held in Oslo in October2014, to recognise the work of exceptional people who believe that our way of perceiving and understanding the world derived from our profession could contribute to its development.

WLA have announced this week the launch of the inaugural WLA Awards. WLA say ”Over many years we have published thousands of projects online and in WLA Magazine and we thought that it was time to launch our own awards to honour landscape architects around the world for their outstanding work. The annual World Landscape Architecture Awards seeks to recognise outstanding work and promote the profession across the world. The Awards endeavour to recognise innovative work (conceptual and built) by l

The LI held their award ceremony yesterday celebrating successful projects by the profession. The Presidents award went to TACP - A long-term action plan for key stakeholders and public sector bodies to help address the decline in biodiversity in the four local authority areas of Monmouthshire, Blaenau-Gwent, Caerphilly and Torfaen. You can find the full list of winners here

In the week in which dementia overtook heart disease to become the leading cause of death in England and Wales, CSH hosted a flagship national conference which looked at how we can use the natural environment to tackle both this and other forms of mental ill health.

CSH state on their website; “Working on behalf of the National Outdoors for All Working Group, CSH invited speakers from across the healthcare and natural environment sectors, led by a keynote programme comprising Gina Radford, Deput

Gardens By The Bay features in Planet Earth 2′s episode on cities. Photo: BBC

The Supertress of Gardens by the Bay was featured in a documentary, whose debut episode was the most-watched natural history documentary in the United Kingdom in over 15 years.

In the finale episode of BBC Earth’s Planet Earth II which focuses on cities and how the natural world interacts with urban environments, Singapore gets screen time as an example of how cities can work to be conducive to nature.

3rd Call for Contributions – CIPA Symposium 2017 (Ottawa, Canada). The call for papers for the symposium is now open, deadline for submission is 1st February 2017.

Recording the physical characteristics of historic places and landscapes is a cornerstone of preventive maintenance, monitoring and conservation. The information produced by such work guides decision-making by property owners, site managers, public officials, and conservators. Rigorous documentation may also serve a broader purpose

IFLA World received a recent from IFLA Asia-Pacific on plans and events that IFLA Asia-Pacific Region associations and friends can look forward to in 2017:

1. IFLA Asia-Pacific Landscape Architecture Awards 2017 – the much-awaited international platform that recognises the excellent works of landscape architecture in the rich and diverse context of varied culture and geographies across asia-pacific countries; and an excellent platform for international showcase and business profiling across the

“We are here because we all believe passionately in Landscape Architecture”

Kathryn Moore, IFLA President

The IFLA Action plan was published in June 2016. It sets out the agenda for IFLA over the coming years, addressing the global challenges faced by the profession and the opportunities for a new philosophy of landscape that considers identity at its core. IFLA has set out 11 aims which are detailed in the plan alongside 3 strategic pillars designed to deliver them

The Public Health matters blog has an interesting recent article about Green space, mental wellbeing and sustainable communities. It summarises the evidence Public Health England has submitted to the recent Parks Inquiry, more about which you can find here.